Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Jacob wanted to hug her, or at least pat her shoulder or rub her head. He settled for holding a hand out and helping her to her feet.

“Did you try telling Dr. McDisney on the boat about it? Or anyone here?”

Ella shrugged. “I didn’t know how to describe it.”

Jacob motioned for her to follow him back. “It is one of the hardest things there is to describe, in my experience.”

“What is?”

“Happiness. All these poems I’m digging up. That’s the theme — that’s what they are.”

Ella spoke slowly, as if worried about mispronouncing something. “I was happy.”

They walked back, slower this time, not afraid of being seen, right up to the side door. Jacob deposited Ella safely back in the common area without a single raised eyebrow (except from Paul, and who cared?). She went and played a game of backgammon with Maura, and the two of them spoke about daytime TV, and while Paul was distracted by a boy attempting to watercolor the windows, Jacob made his way over to the bookshelf and pulled out Tess of the D’Urbervilles .

He felt Ella’s eyes on him as he wrote on a blank page in the back. “Okay, chowderhead, you’re a poet. Write me a poem. ‘Orange Peels.’ Five stanzas. Free verse. Due Friday.”

JULY

Dr. Dorothy Zelig was in charge of the widely advertised new pet therapy program at Anchorage House, which involved taking exceptionally high-strung patients (like Maura) and helping them to relax by playing with dogs. Children who had suffered various abuses at the hands of grown-ups learned to accept love and to care for living creatures. Even if it sounded like hippie-dippy hogwash to him, Jacob had never had any issue with Dr. Dorothy personally until he was once again summoned to Oliver’s office in the middle of the day — this time for exactly the reasons he’d feared. He didn’t know how he’d missed spotting her, and he suspected she’d been hiding down behind some shrubbery on the far end of the graveyard and not at all walking one of the therapy dogs and minding her own business, as she claimed during the meeting in Oliver’s office.

“Gosford had to take a tinkle,” Dr. Dorothy declared, “and that’s when I saw Mr. Blaumann here and the patient Ella Yorke talking suspiciously out by the old statue.”

She spoke as if she were a witness in an episode of Law & Order: Pedantic Bullshit Unit .

“I wasn’t aware,” Jacob said, “that I was talking in an especially suspicious manner.”

Oliver, sitting behind his desk in full-on, serious Dr. Boujedra mode, eyed Jacob wearily. “So you don’t deny that you were with the patient outside the building?”

Jacob considered that it was essentially Dr. Dorothy’s word against his, and that Ella would probably deny everything if they spoke to her about it. But he didn’t want them talking to her about their chat, and giving her the impression that she had committed some sin just by having a conversation. And for another thing, fuck Dr. Dorothy.

“Yeah, no. I don’t deny it. Ella was clearly upset, and it was a nice day, and I thought some fresh air would put things in perspective. Legend has it that nice weather has a calming effect on human beings, but I’m just an orderly so I couldn’t say for sure. Obviously I’d have to do a longitudinal study with multiple placebo groups and write a seven-hundred-page dissertation to be qualified to say so in an official capacity.”

Oliver was upset, but Dr. Dorothy beat him to it. “ This is what I’m talking about. A real lack of respect among the staff for the hard work and expertise represented by the doctors, and it is undermining the authority that we have among the patients.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You got a D.O. from the University of Barbados, and you teach kids how to pet dogs.”

“Mr. Blaumann, I won’t tolerate disrespect toward the doctors here,” snapped Oliver. “Clearly you are aware that the code of conduct expressly forbids venturing outside the building in the company of a patient. So why did you feel it was within your rights to do so?”

Jacob had never heard him shout before — it gave him chills, how much it sounded like his father.

He knew he had no chance here. Despite the fact that he hadn’t said anything inappropriate to Ella, and certainly hadn’t done anything, he had legitimately broken the rules in letting her outside without permission. It was definitely a fireable offense, and it wasn’t like his record was sterling otherwise. For years he’d worn his contempt for this place on his sleeve — talking back to the doctors, calling in sick, cutting corners, arriving late, leaving early. He’d been daring them to fire him almost since he started working there. Losing the job now wouldn’t keep him up at night exactly, but if he told Dr. Dorothy to shove it, then he’d be gone and Ella would be on her own. On the other hand if he promised to give Ella a wide berth from here on out, there wasn’t much point either.

“Ella Yorke,” he began, much more flushed than he felt he had any reason to be, “is a very bright girl. We had a conversation one afternoon in Sissy Coltrane’s art room—”

“ Dr . Coltrane,” Dr. Dorothy stressed.

“Okay, but she’s not a doctor though, she’s—”

“Mr. Blaumann, please,” Oliver urged.

“I’ve just got to say, all this doctor this, doctor that crap is getting kind of Second Commandment. ‘I am the Lord your doctor, thou shalt have no other doctors before me!’”

Dr. Dorothy nearly spit on the carpet. “Is he serious? He’s really out of his mind. Oliver, he’s — this kid needs help.”

“He’s not a kid, Dorothy, he’s twenty-eight years old. And as I understand it he’s having a difficult year, but Jacob , as a sign of respect in this workplace, you will refer to the doctors by their proper title, and that is final. Am I understood?”

“Does that mean I’m not fired then?”

There was a little flirtatious hint in Oliver’s eye as he said, finally, “You have to promise me that you will not engage Ms. Yorke any further without guidance from professionals. From doctors . My door is always open.”

Jacob reluctantly promised, and Oliver called the meeting to a close.

But as they were all standing up, Jacob turned to them both. “Can I just ask? Have you seen any kind of improvement, therapeutically speaking, in Ella Yorke since she came back?”

Dr. Dorothy gave him a dirty look. “That’s not something we can discuss with you.”

“Oh, come on. You tell us all the time which patients are doing worse, so we can keep a closer eye on them. What’s wrong with saying if one is doing better?”

Oliver, surprisingly, accepted this logic. “Ella’s actually been improving a lot since she came back. Her dosage of Prozac has been reduced. Dr. Feingold notes that she’s been participating more in her group work, and Dr. Coltrane has nothing but good things to report. In our sessions she is… optimistic. It’s a big improvement. In fact, if things stay positive, we all think she’s going to be ready to leave by the end of the summer so she can start school again.”

At this, Jacob smiled widely, and it seemed to confuse both psychiatrists — and even himself. Was he smiling smugly? Cryptically, sarcastically, menacingly? No. It was just an actual smile. A natural reaction to hearing something he’d been hoping to hear.

“Is there something — Jacob? Is there something we should be aware of?”

No end of things , he thought.

• • •

As punishment for the incident, he was put onto night shifts for the remainder of July, beginning the very next evening. After riding in on a bus packed with people heading home after a long day at work, Jacob arrived at Anchorage House just as the sun was setting behind the main gates. He’d been up since morning, spending the day alone in Oliver’s flat, watching television in his underwear. It was vaguely boring but hardly a punishment. More like a punishment for Oliver, for now Jacob would hardly ever see him except on weekends.